Tom Cruise, like many actors, has a simple preference when it comes to choosing his co-workers.

"I like to work with people that I like hanging out with, that I admire, that are really smart and talented and we can, you know, problem-solve together," he said. "That's what it's about. I love J.J. To work with him again on this - that's why I did it. That's why I brought it to him, I said, 'Let's do this together, we'll have some fun.'"

Cruise made his comments in a promotional interview to promote his latest film, "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol," the fourth film in the spy series that was released by Paramount Pictures last week. The actor is referring to producer J.J. Abrams, one of its producers, who also wrote and directed the third "Mission: Impossible" movie that was released in 2006.

"His sequences are amazing and also his characters - how he keeps the tension and suspense, in his stories .... when you look at 'The Incredibles,' when you look at 'Ratatouille,' the design of those sequences, the characters and also his understanding and love of cinema ... We share that together," Cruise said about Bird.

"When we got together, we just talked about ... you know, you just go right in," the actor added. "It's like an old friend talking about our favorite movies and the things that inspire us and I felt personally that he was someone I'd really like to hang out with and work with and someone I had great respect for."

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol sees Cruise's character, secret agent Ethan Hunt, scaling the world's tallest building - Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which is more than 2716 feet tall. He uses special gloves that attach themselves to the side of the structure, much like Spider-Man.

"They actually built walls for me just to practice my climbing and I would do drills," the actor said. "We had to figure out how are the gloves going to work, how do we do it. So I spent months working on that and then training, going up and down as fast as I could, getting my endurance up in the climb."

"Here you have Tom hanging on one of the side of ... the tallest peaks on the building," Patton said about Hunt's dangerous climb. "He is doing this stunt and he's truly doing it. He had to do it over a few days. I remember being in Hair and Makeup and going, 'Please, please, don't let anything happen to Tom.'"